Bird O'donnell Quotes & Sayings

I HAD a dove and the sweet dove died;
And I have thought it died of grieving:
O, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied,
With a silken thread of my own hand's weaving;
Sweet little red feet! why should you die -
Why should you leave me, sweet bird! why?
You liv'd alone in the forest-tree,
Why, pretty thing! would you not live with me?
I kiss'd you oft and gave you white peas;
Why not live sweetly, as in the green trees? — John Keats

Hark! o'er the dread abyss the sea-bird screams
The rocks resound
again the lightning gleams! — John Ramsay

If she has been called a woman of the town, a tart, a bawd, a wanton, a bawdy-basket, a bird-of-the-game, a bit of stuff, a buttered bun, a cockatrice, a cock-chafer, a cow, a crack, a cunt, a daughter of Eve, a gay-girl, a gobble-prick, a high-flyer, a high-roller, a hussy, a hurry-whore, a jill, a jude, a judy, a jug, laced mutton, lift-skirts, light o' love, merry legs, minx, moll, moonlighter, morsel, mutton-broker, mount, nestcock, night-bird, night-piece, night-walker, nymph of darkness, nymph of the pavement, petticoat, pick-up, piece, pillow-mate, pinch-prick, pole-climber, prancer, quail, quiet mouse, or even Queen - it is not surprising. A woman of lively parts is as likely to be slandered as she is to be praised. — Erica Jong

Song in the Manner of Housman O woe, woe, People are born and die, We also shall be dead pretty soon Therefore let us act as if we were dead already. The bird sits on the hawthorn tree But he dies also, presently. Some lads get hung, and some get shot. Woeful is this human lot. Woe! woe, etcetera ... London is a woeful place, Shropshire is much pleasanter. Then let us smile a little space Upon fond nature's morbid grace. Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera ... — Ezra Pound

Noel Coward said work is more fun than fun, but then he didn't work in the Bird's Eye factory packing frozen fish fingers nine hours a day, did he? — Paul O'Grady

A wise old owl once lived in a wood, the more he heard the less he said, the less he said the more he heard, let's emulate that wise old bird. — Flann O'Brien

Tradition whispers that in the sky is a bird, blue as the sky itself, which brings to its finders happiness. But everyone cannot see it; for mortal eyes are prone to be blinded by the glitter of wealth, fame, and position, and deceived by the mocking Will-o-Wisp of empty honors. But for the fortunate ones who seek with open eyes and hearts, with the artlessness, simplicity, and faith which are richest in childhood, there is an undying promise; and to them the Blue Bird lives and carols, a rejoicing symbol of Happiness and Contentment unto the end. — Venice J. Bloodworth

O Cuckoo! shall I call thee bird, Or but a wandering voice? — William Wordsworth

Fourth Floor, Dawn, Up All Night Writing Letters
Pigeons shake their wings on the copper church roof
out my window across the street, a bird perched on the cross
surveys the city's blue-grey clouds. Larry Rivers
'll come at 10 AM and take my picture. I'm taking
your picture, pigeons. I'm writing you down, Dawn.
I'm immortalizing your exhaust, Avenue A bus.
O Thought, now you'll have to think the same thing forever! — Allen Ginsberg

Sonnet IV"

I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year;
And you must welcome from another part
Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.
No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell
Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;
And I have loved you all too long and well
To carry still the high sweet breast of spring.

Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,
I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.
Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another clime. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I'm not planning on giving my kids any of my wealth. They know when their education is over, I'm pushing them out of the nest. The bird you see dead under the nest is the one who didn't think about the future. — Kevin O'Leary

I am mad with joy.
At least I think it's joy. Strangers have come, and it's a whole new game. I kiss the ice on the frozen creeks, I press my ear to it, honoring the water that rattles below, for by water they came: the icebergs parted as if gently pushed back by enormous hands, and the ship sailed through, sea-eager, foamy-necked, white sails, riding the swan-road, flying like a bird! O happy Grendel! Fifteen glorious heroes, proud in their battle dress, fat as cows! — John Gardner

And if sometimes, on the stairs of a palace, or on the green side of a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you, ask of the wind, or of the wave, or of the star, or of the bird, or of the clock, of whatever flies, or sighs, or rocks, or sings, or speaks, ask what hour it is; and the wind, wave star, bird, clock, will answer you: 'it is the hour to be drunken! Be drunken, if you would not be martyred slaves of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will."" (He grins at his father provocatively.) — Eugene O'Neill

I would ask myself what o'clock it could be; I could hear the whistling of trains, which, now nearer and now farther off, punctuating the distance like the note of a bird in a forest, shewed me in perspective the deserted countryside through which a traveller would be hurrying towards the nearest station: the path that he followed being fixed for ever in his memory by the general excitement due to being in a strange place, to doing unusual things, to the last words of conversation, to farewells exchanged beneath an unfamiliar lamp which echoed still in his ears amid the silence of the night; and to the delightful prospect of being once again at home. — Marcel Proust

He saw that there was something alive in it, and went near enough to read a sign that said, TWO DEADLY ENEMIES. HAVE A LOOK FREE. There was a black bear about four feet long and very thin, resting on the floor of the cage; his back was spotted with bird lime that had been shot down on him by a small chicken hawk sitting on a perch in the upper part of the same apartment. Mose of the hawk's tail was gone; the bear only had one eye. — Flannery O'Connor

O lovely river of Yvette!
O darling river! like a bride,
Some dimpled, bashful, fair Lisette
Thou goest to wed the Orge's tide.
O lovely river Yvette!
O darling stream! on balanced wings
The wood-birds sang the chansonnette
That here a wandering poet sings. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

O lyric Love, half angel and half bird. And all a wonder and a wild desire. — Robert Browning

The time has come to link ecology to economic and human development. When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all. What is happening to the rain forests of Madagascar and Brazil will affect us all. — E. O. Wilson

So, O king, does the present life of man on earth seem to me, in comparison with the time which is unknown to us, as though a sparrow flew swiftly through the hall, coming in by one door and going out by the other, and you, the while, sat at meat with your captains and liegemen, in wintry weather, with a fire burning in your midst and heating the room, the storm raging out of doors and driving snow and rain before it. For the time for which he is within, the bird is sheltered from the storm, but after this short while of calm he flies out again into the cold and is seen no more. Thus the life of man is visible for a moment, but we know not what comes before it or follows after it. — Bede

We can love religion as we need rituals, but The Holy Spirit is a bird, free to fly and land where it likes. We don't actually need 'religion' in order to have a relationship with The Holy Spirit. Too many wars an violence over religion.We need to see it's all the same spirit and we are part of that spirit so we shouldn't be fighting over what name we call it. It's a free bird. — Sinead O'Connor

I thought that you would be frozen in awe when you found the sequence, when you heard a bird's song repeating my Morse code, my cry for help, my S.O.S, when you saw the same numbers in the petals of a flower and the structure of a pine cone, when you saw with your own eyes the interconnectedness of all things.
But I was wrong.
You searched for a male god, a creator, an intelligent designer, or you banished the beauty and mystery of the world beneath the cold concrete grave of closed-eye skepticism. The few of you who could still hear my music felt tortured and misunderstood; you reached out for any conspiracy theory large enough to explain your alienated despair, your sense that the Earth was dying and no one cared.
But listen to me -- you are not alone. Run your fingers through the grass and grab it in your fists, feel my pulse echoing through your blood. You. Are. Not. Alone. And I -- I am not dead yet. — Sarah Warden

Proud Maisie"

Proud Maisie is in the wood,
Walking so early;
Sweet Robin sits on the bush,
Singing so rarely.

'Tell me, thou bonny bird,
When shall I marry me?'
'When six braw gentlemen
Kirkward shall carry ye.'

'Who makes the bridal bed,
Birdie, say truly?'
'The grey-headed sexton,
That delves the grave duly.

'The glowworm o'er grave and stone
Shall light thee steady;
The owl from the steeple sing,
'Welcome, proud lady. — Walter Scott

Pure and undimmed, thy angel smile Is mirrored on my dreams, Like evening's sunset-girded isle Upon her shadowed streams: And o'er my thoughts thy vision floats, Like melody of spring-bird, notes; When the blue halcyon gently laves His plumage in the flashing waves. — Benjamin

When government does, occasionally, work, it works in an elitist fashion. That is, government is most easily manipulated by people who have money and power already. This is why government benefits usually go to people who don't need benefits from government. Government may make some environmental improvements, but these will be improvements for rich bird-watchers. And no one in government will remember that when poor people go bird-watching they do it at Kentucky Fried Chicken. — P. J. O'Rourke

EVERYONE suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields;
on - on - and out of sight.
Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror Drifted away ... O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done. — Siegfried Sassoon

O lyric love! half angel half bird — Robert Browning

A lot of times, the inspiration for a novel is a messy bird's nest of shiny things. Little things that don't make a whole lot of sense or that, no matter how hard you look, cannot be found directly in the finished book. — Molly O'Keefe

I tried to put a bird in a cage. O fool that I am! For the bird was Truth. Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put Truth in a cage! — William Carlos Williams

When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all. — E. O. Wilson

When Jack came in he found him sitting before a tray of bird's skins and labels. Stephen looked up, and after a moment said, 'To a tormented mind there is nothing, I believe, more irritating than comfort. Apart from anything else it often implies superior wisdom in the comforter. But I am very sorry for your trouble, my dear.'
'Thank you, Stephen. Had you told me that there was always a tomorrow, I think I should have thrust your calendar down your throat. — Patrick O'Brian

RANGE-FINDING The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung And cut a flower beside a ground bird's nest Before it stained a single human breast. The stricken flower bent double and so hung. And still the bird revisited her young. A butterfly its fall had dispossessed A moment sought in air his flower of rest, Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung. On the bare upland pasture there had spread O'ernight 'twixt mullein stalks a wheel of thread And straining cables wet with silver dew. A sudden passing bullet shook it dry. The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly, But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew. — Robert Frost

In the hollow tree, in the old gray tower,
The spectral Owl doth dwell;
Dull, hated, despised, in the sunshine hour,
But at the dusk
he's abroad and well!
Not a bird of the forest e'er mates with him
All mock him outright, by day:
But at night, when the woods grow still and dim,
The boldest will shrink away!
O, when the night falls, and roosts the fowl,
Then, then, is the reign of the Horned Owl! — Bryan Procter

You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,You are soft as the nesting dove.Come to my heart and bring it restAs the bird flies home to its welcome nest. — Paul Laurence Dunbar

He hears men's voices, shouts, so evil and grim he hears their names: Tin Tin, Fun Boy, T-Bird, Top Dollar and Tom Tom. The sounds sink into his heart like ice and brun in his head with a heat so intense it glows white. — James O'Barr

I love the idea of birds having human qualities ... I think all humans want to be birds so we can fly. — Aoife O'Donovan

Because the dog was after her, Poor Cat Fright. As I was going up Pippin Hill, Pippin Hill was dirty, There I met a pretty miss, And she dropped me a curtsey. Early to bed, and early to rise, Is the way to be healthy, wealthy, and wise. Old woman, old woman, shall we go a-shearing? Speak a little louder, sir, I am very thick o' hearing. Old woman, old woman, shall I kiss you dearly? Thank you, kind sir, I hear very clearly. The Cuckoo's a bonny bird, She sings as she flies, She brings us good tidings, And tells us no lies. She sucks little birds' eggs, To make her voice clear, And never cries "Cuckoo!" Till spring-time of the year. — Harrison Weir

Showers and sunshine bring,
Slowly, the deepening verdure o'er the earth;
To put their foliage out, the woods are slack,
And one by one the singing-birds come back. — William C. Bryant

Make my heart, O heart of the universe, a divine bird that nests only on the throne of God. — Rumi

I realized that Eastern thought had somewhat more compassion for all living things. Man was a form of life that in another reincarnation might possibly be a horsefly or a bird of paradise or a deer. So a man of such a faith, looking at animals, might be looking at old friends or ancestors. In the East the wilderness has no evil connotation; it is thought of as an expression of the unity and harmony of the universe. — William O. Douglas

When I was young I was on punishment a lot and I used to watch a lot of TV, and I asked myself a question: 'How come people like Mike? How come they like Magic? How come they like Bird? How come they don't like the big guys?' So I just throw a little bit of what they were doing. You smile, you act crazy and silly. And I think people like me because I'm different. I've always been a class clown type of guy. It comes natural. — Shaquille O'Neal

There's times when the crockery seems alive, an' flies out o' your hand like a bird. It's like the glass, sometimes, 'ull crack as it stands. What is to be broke will be broke. — George Eliot

He who knows all the answers, but none of the questions is like a large gobbling bird on Thanksgiving. — Jayce O'Neal

It was five o'clock when the stupid rooster started crowing relentlessly, robbing me of my sleep. The sun hadn't even risen yet. Dumbass bird should be on Prozac. — Alison Bliss

Birds sing on a bare bough; O, believer, canst not thou? — Charles Spurgeon

What's important about morality in politics is us. We own the chicken farm. We must give our bird-brained, feather-headed politicians morals. Politicians love to think of themselves as "free-range" but they do not have the capacity to hunt or gather morals in the wild. If we fail to supply them with morality, politicians begin to act very scary in the barnyard. These are enormous headless chickens and they have nukes. — P. J. O'Rourke

Within the ring there lies an O,
Within the O there looks an eye,
In the eye there swims a sea,
And in the sea reflected sky,
And in the sky there shines the sun,
Within the sun a bird of gold. — Kathleen Raine

One of the things I miss about teaching is that students would tell me what I ought to read. One of my students, back in the 1960s, put me onto Borges, and I remember another mentioning Flann O'Brien's At Swim Two-Birds in the same way. — John Barth

Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag, -
Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag, -

Droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree, -
Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea. — Alfred Tennyson

I've always been fascinated by flight and the freeness of birds. — Aoife O'Donovan

First don: O cuckoo, shall I call thee bird,
Or but a wandering voice?
Second don: State the alternative preferred,
With reasons for your choice. — A.E. Housman

Golosh Street is an interesting locality. All the oddities of trade seemed to have found their way thither and made an eccentric mercantile settlement. There is a bird-shop at one corner. Immediately opposite is an establishment where they sell nothing but ornaments made out of the tinted leaves of autumn, varnished and gummed into various forms. Further down is a second-hand book-stall. There is a small chink between two ordinary-sized houses, in which a little Frenchman makes and sells artificial eyes, specimens of which, ranged on a black velvet cushion, stare at you unwinkingly through the window as you pass, until you shudder and hurry on, thinking how awful the world would be if everyone went about without eyelids. Madame Filomel, the fortune-teller, lives at No. 12 Golosh Street, second storey front, pull the bell on the left-hand side. Next door to Madame is the shop of Herr Hippe, commonly called the Wondersmith.
("The Wondersmith") — Fitz-James O'Brien

Beautiful is thy wristlet, decked with stars and cunningly wrought in myriad-coloured jewels. But more beautiful to me thy sword with its curve of lightning like the outspread wings of the divine bird of Vishnu, perfectly poised in the angry red light of the sunset.
It quivers like the one last response of life in ecstasy of pain at the final stroke of death; it shines like the pure flame of being burning up earthly sense with one fierce flash.
Beautiful is thy wristlet, decked with starry gems; but thy sword, O lord of thunder, is wrought with uttermost beauty, terrible to behold or think of. — Rabindranath Tagore

Cobbled streets and no shops open past six o'clock, a communal life that seemed to revolve around church, and where you could often hear bird song and nothing else: Gaia felt as though she had fallen through a portal into a land lost in time. — J.K. Rowling

University is the best couple of years of your life. Nowhere else can you drink and chase as many birds. — Michael O'Leary

Before the Battle:
Music of whispering trees
Hushed by the broad-winged breeze
Where shaken water gleams;
And evening radiance falling
With reedy bird-notes calling.
O bear me safe through dark, you low-voiced streams.
I have no need to pray
That fear may pass away;
I scorn the growl and rumble of the fight
That summons me from cool
Silence of marsh and pool,
And yellow lilies islanded in light.
O river of stars and shadows, lead me through the night. — Siegfried Sassoon

o each his Dulcinea, that he alone can name...to each a secret hiding place where he can find the haunting face to light his secret flame. For with his Dulcinea beside him, so to stand, a man can do quite anything, outfly the bird upon the wing, hold moonlight in his hand. Yet if you build your life on dreams, it's prudent to recall--a man with moonlight in his hand has nothing there at all. There is no Dulcinea, she's made of flame and air, and yet how lovely life would seem if ev'ry man could weave a dream to keep him from despair. To each his Dulcinea...though she's naught but flame and air! — Mitch Leigh

Oh, what is that bird?'
'It is a wheatear. We have seen between two and three hundred since we set out, and I have told you their name twice, nay, three times. — Patrick O'Brian

Wherever I am, I start my day, it's the same. I'm not an early bird. I'm not waking up at five o'clock, six o'clock; it's usually seven-thirty, eight o'clock, and I will then read the newspapers, emails from around the world and make phone calls. — Roustam Tariko

Tiny as a sparrow, fierce as an eagle, Lisbeth Salander is one of the great Scandinavian avengers of our time, an angry bird catapulting into the fortresses of power and wiping smiles off the faces of smug, predatory pigs. — A.O. Scott

Invitation to Love
Come when the nights are bright with stars
Or come when the moon is mellow;
Come when the sun his golden bars
Drops on the hay-field yellow.
Come in the twilight soft and gray,
Come in the night or come in the day,
Come, O love, whene'er you may,
And you are welcome, welcome.
You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,
You are soft as the nesting dove.
Come to my heart and bring it to rest
As the bird flies home to its welcome nest.
Come when my heart is full of grief
Or when my heart is merry;
Come with the falling of the leaf
Or with the redd'ning cherry.
Come when the year's first blossom blows,
Come when the summer gleams and glows,
Come with the winter's drifting snows,
And you are welcome, welcome — Paul Laurence Dunbar

There must be something beyond man in this world. Even on attaining to his highest possibilities, he is like a bird beating against his cage. There is something beyond, O deathless like a sea-shell, moaning for the bosom of the ocean to which you belong! — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

There are some occasions when you must not refuse a cup of tea, otherwise you are judged an exotic and barbarous bird without any hope of ever being able to take your place in civilised society.
If you are invited to an English home, at five o'clock in the morning you get a cup of tea. It is either brought in by a heartily smiling hostess or an almost malevolently silent maid. — George Mikes

For Delta blueman Robert Johnson and his contemporaries, the train was the eternal metaphor for the travelling life, and it still holds true today. There is no travel like it. Train lines carve through all facets of a nation. While buses stick to major highways and planes reduce the unfolding of lives to a bird's eye view, trains putter through the domains of the rich and the poor, the desperate and the idle, rural and urban, isolated and cluttered. Through train windows you see realities rarely visible in the landscaped tourist areas. Those frames hold the untended jungle of a nation's truth. Despite my shredded emotions, there was still no feeling like dragging all your worldly possessions onto a carriage, alone and anonymous, to set off into the unknown; where any and all varieties of adventures await, where you might meet a new best friend, where the love of your life could be hiding in a dingy cafe. The clatter of the tracks is the sound of liberation. — Patrick O'Neil

The daughter sat down too and watched him with a cautious sly look as if he were a bird that had come up very close. — Flannery O'Connor

Then from the neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers, Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water, Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music, That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

O magic sleep! O comfortable bird, That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind Till it is hush'd and smooth! — John Keats

One day a hummingbird flew in
It fluttered against the window til I got it down where I could reach it with an open umbrella
When I had it in my hand it was so small I couldn't believe I had it
but I could feel the intense life
so intense and so tiny
... You were like the humming bird to me ...
And I am rather inclined to feel that you and I know the best part of one another without spending much time together
It is not that I fear the knowing
It is that I am at this moment willing to let you be what you are to me
it is beautiful and pure and very intensely alive. — Georgia O'Keeffe

I am not an early bird. I go to bed normally between midnight and 1 o'clock, so it is understandable that I cannot be an early bird. I wake up around 9 o'clock. — Dieter Rams

O happiness! O happiness! Wilt thou perhaps sing, O my soul? Thou liest in the grass. But this is the secret, solemn hour, when no shepherd playeth his pipe.

Take care! Hot noontide sleepeth on the fields. Do not sing! Hush! The world is perfect.

Do not sing, thou prairie-bird, my soul! Do not even whisper! Lo - hush! The old noontide sleepeth, it moveth its mouth: doth it not just now drink a drop of happiness -

- An old brown drop of golden happiness, golden wine? Something whisketh over it, its happiness laugheth. Thus - laugheth a God. Hush!

"For happiness, how little sufficeth for happiness!" Thus spoke I once and thought myself wise. But it was a blasphemy: that have I now learned. Wise fools speak better.

The least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a whisk, an eye-glance - little maketh up the best happiness. Hush! — Friedrich Nietzsche

I wish to Heaven I was married," she said resentfully as she attacked the yams with loathing. "I'm tired of everlastingly being unnatural and never doing anything I want to do. I'm tired of acting like I don't eat more than a bird, and walking when I want to run and saying I feel faint after a waltz, when I could dance for two days and never get tired. I'm tired of saying, 'How wonderful you are!' to fool men who haven't got one-half the sense I've got, and I'm tired of pretending I don't know anything, so men can tell me things and feel important while they're doing it ... I can't eat another bite. — Margaret Mitchell

I think of myself as a fairly decent human being and it gives me great pain to be considered for all the mean S.O.B.s that come along. I've played bird decapitators, puppy stranglers, woman beaters, wife poisoners, child molesters - every goddamn thing you can think of. It was quite scene there for a while. But I think the image is changing ... I hope to God the old image is fading from people's minds. — George C. Scott

What kind of bird do you think these feathers come from?' she asked.
'I don't know. A swan?'
'You had better stop wearing those wings, then.
A swan might fall in love with you. And as you
probably know, swans mate for life.'
'You are a funny one, Rose. — Heather O'Neill

Pass not beneath, O Caravan, or pass not singing. Have you heard
That silence where the birds are dead yet something pipeth like a bird? — James Elroy Flecker

The Bird of Time

O Bird of Time on your fruitful bough
What are the songs you sing? ...
Songs of the glory and gladness of life,
Of poignant sorrow and passionate strife,
And the lilting joy of the spring;
Of hope that sows for the years unborn,
And faith that dreams of a tarrying morn,
The fragrant peace of the twilight's breath,
And the mystic silence that men call death.

O Bird of Time, say where did you learn
The changing measures you sing? ...
In blowing forests and breaking tides,
In the happy laughter of new-made brides,
And the nests of the new-born spring;
In the dawn that thrills to a mother's prayer,
And the night that shelters a heart's despair,
In the sigh of pity, the sob of hate,
And the pride of a soul that has conquered fate. — Sarojini Naidu